1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to refill cartridges for mechanical pencils and more particularly to such a cartridge which can be used for storing pencil leads and dispensing such leads directly into the storage chamber of a mechanical pencil.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Mechanical pencil lead is generally sold in containers from which the lead must be either removed individually for loading into the storage chamber of a mechanical pencil or poured into the chamber from such container. This loading operation is somewhat cumbersome and often results in broken and/or lost leads. U.S. Pat. No. 4,811,842 to Sekiya describes a pencil lead container designed to overcome this shortcoming. In this device, a vertically movable actuator is employed to open a gate or window in the top of the container while this same actuator drives a single pencil lead through the window and out of the container. While this device appears to overcome some of the shortcomings of the prior art mentioned above, it has certain shortcomings of its own. First, it is only capable of dispensing a single piece of lead with each actuation of its actuator. This makes the dispensing of lead into the pencil storage chamber somewhat time consuming and laborious. Further, the construction of the device of the Sekiya patent is somewhat more complicated and costly than to be desired in a throwaway type cartridge for packaging and vending lead.